Google is taking some heat from European data protection authorities today due to the way the search giant dealt with "right to be forgotten" requests in Europe.

According to Reuters, Google is meeting with European Union privacy watchdogs today in regards to the company's handling of a ruling from the top court. The ruling upheld the people's right to request that outdated links be removed from internet search results.

More specifically, European citizens were granted the right to ask search engines to remove links to information deemed inadequate, irrelevant or excessive from appearing in searches for their own name.

After the ruling, Google only removed results from its European search engines, such as google.co.uk. This is problematic because anyone can access the hidden information by switching to google.com, which defeats the whole purpose of the ruling.

Google is also under the microscope for its decision to notify the owners of the websites that have been removed from search results. EU privacy groups are concerned that the notification process could have a negative effect on people who make the requests.

For instance, links to an article by a well-known BBC journalist about an ex-Wall Street banker were removed as well as several links to stories in Britain's Guardian newspaper. The authors of the stories then wrote about the removal and speculated about who requested the removal.

Google eventually put a few links to the Guardian articles back on the internet.

Google seems to be in a constant battle with the EU. For the past couple of years, the search company was accused of boosting its own services and suppressing rivals. Google made proposals such as allowing competitors to display their logos and web links in a prominent box in search results, and also allowing content providers will be able to decide what material Google can use for its own services. Also, Google would make it easier for advertisers to promote on rival platforms such as Microsoft's Bing.

This is similar to the two-year investigation the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched against Google regarding its dominance on the Web. Instead of paying fines, the FTC made Google promise that it would stop scraping reviews and information from other websites, stop requesting sales bans when suing companies for patent infringement and allow advertisers to export data in order to evaluate advertising campaigns.

Now the EU thinks it can make Internet censorship laws that apply to the entire world. We don't let Iran or N. Korea do that, do we? The unbridled arrogance of these EuroNazis is frightening. All major search providers should boycott the EU until it comes to its senses.

Because if you put up articles on the internet, it should not fall under the same privacy laws as on old fashion paper.

And the internet is even worse, as even old information that would normally be forgotten in the old days, will hunt you for the rest of your live.

Yeah its not perfect solution, so if you have a non EU IP-address, imho you should still have access, as it is a EU law, and it should not be used for the hole internet.

And don't take my stance on the right to be forgotten as the same as pro censorship, as the two are really not the same.

Lets say, some one post on a blog about a party you had, in the post is a photo of you and others doing crazy shit, with underneath all the names of everyone in the photo, including your name, and because the blog is popular, your name and the photo combination is high in the search list.

You ask if the guy to remove your name from the photo but he dose not cooperate with you.

Still your looking for a job, and you check your name on Google, and one of the first hits is:

quote: John Doe's Blog | Party time - WordPress.com John.Doe.wordpress.com/May 12, 2014 - We had a party last night again, Me - Peter Pan - john Doe andHumpty Dumpty, dead drunk YEAH great party ...

No way in hell you ever gone get a job again, as long as that photo is online and one of the first hits on Google, even if that was the only time you got that drunk.

For that reason there are some privacy rules in the EU, and you have the 'Right To Be Forgotten' requests now.

But i also think that 'Right To Be Forgotten' option should only work after a certain period of time, lets say 6 months or so, and news post from newspapers (not tabloid's) should be harder to remove.

Is this a perfect solution?, no far from it, but i cant think of any better, but i think that past mistakes should not hunt you forever eider.

As I think doing noting dose even more harm, we in the EU think the internet should be free and support net neutrality, but we don't think there should be also pure anarchy, so i think our governments think the opposite of what the US government thinks.

You are very naive if you think that European nations don't spy on other nations.

As to spying on "friends". Nations and their governments aren't a single individual with consistent morals, attitudes, and policies. They are made up of different individuals and political groups with different goals and priorities.

Differing opinions and priorities are part of democracy. However, it also means that there will always be groups in even our closest allies that are opposed to us, and there will always be issues on which our interests don't coincide.

quote: For that reason there are some privacy rules in the EU, and you have the 'Right To Be Forgotten' requests now.

This is not a right to be forgotten, this is censorship, plain and simple.

Even if you don't like what others have reported on you, you can't, even in the EU, tell the sites not to keep it. Google is just indexing what others PUBLICLY reported.

quote: Lets say, some one post on a blog about a party you had, in the post is a photo of you and others doing crazy shit, with underneath all the names of everyone in the photo, including your name, and because the blog is popular, your name and the photo combination is high in the search list.

Oh wait, you can't be bothered to have your "friend" remove it from his blog? Tough sht.

quote: Oh wait, you can't be bothered to have your "friend" remove it from his blog? Tough sht.

What if that person is not your friend, and dose not wane remove it?

quote: Maybe you shouldn't have allowed it to happen in the first place.

Right .... because no one could have ever taken a really embarrassing photo of you, if they had a camera at the right time.

Its the same argument Joseph McCarthy made, you don't have to be afraid, as long as you don't do anything wrong.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

Tell me, what did the guy in the photo do really do wrong, did he brake any laws?

He just went drinking till he passed out, and his friends just made fun of him, maybe it was his first and last time so wasted.

I work as a piping supervisor in the oil, we hire twice a year new people, and often i am one of the people that is ask to sit in, and has a say in the hiring process.

And one of the things in the candidates hiring package is a summarizing of the most important 3th party information, references of old employers, and there is also the results of a web search, and our H&R has become real good at finding this shit.

And one or two embarrassing items will be over seen, but a photo like, that of you so completely wasted, is really really not a plus point, and they find information that is negative for about 5% of the mostly younger candidates, and they really do have less of a chance of getting the job, specially if those pencil pushers from human resources have there say.

For them its just a numbers game, chances that a person that gets his picture taken like that, will have alcohol problem are just a little bigger, why take the risk.

That's a lot of BS. Evene if you were right (but you're far from it) if all search engines would boycot the EU a local engine would rise and take all the revenue. No company is that stupid to lose a major market just because they don't like the local rules. Think about Google, they gave up personal data to the Chinese authorities just to keep doing business there. That's a lot worse!The EU law is for protecting personal privacy, which (in my opinion) is much more important than any freedom of press. If you're a public person or what you do is of public interest then you give up (some of) your privacy rights. But if you're a private person and someone took a picture of you in an embarrasing situation you should have the right to prevent that from popping up in search results. It's no longer a 'freedom of press' if you're hurting others.

The 'right to be forgotten', isn't about it being never being put on the web, it is about removing it from search results after a period of time when it is not longer really relevant(aka forgotten). So, if someone takes a picture of you and posts in the internet tomorrow this wouldn't apply...

The issue to me is, the EU is requesting that the search engines hide these results WORLD WIDE. Why is that even remotely OK? Also, I don't understand why the onus is on the search engines. If a website is hosting the information the law should require the sites hosted in that country,to remove the content. Google doesn't own these sites...

Actually the data protection laws is spreading across the globe. Many nations would soon choose to interpret the laws in this manner. The laws is about a person has the rights to protect his own private info, not government censoring contents at all. It sorts of become a tough challenge for search engine company. But it can still be handled in some manner, such as demanding the person to provide the actual link to such info, and the search engine remove such link from search results. But the lawmaker is not clear about how to handle this scenario: lets see person A request a link about him to be removed, but what if the link contains other important info related to other events beside the person, does the person has the right to completely block such content even if the search query does not target his name in the first place?

The regulators are overreaching. They lack authority outside of the EU. The court's ruling also lacks authority outside of the EU. If they feel that other nations not following the EU's rules on this makes those rules pointless, then perhaps they should suggest that the court stay their ruling since it is causing search engines operating in the EU hardship without accomplishing anything.

If the EU wishes to spread the "right to be forgotten" beyond their borders, then they better have their diplomats seek treaties with other nations with that goal in mind.

The same thing that happens when courts in one country insist they have the right to data stored abroad by any company that does business within their borders and the other country says that giving up the data without a local court order is illegal.

Lawyers fight it out. In some cases businesses have been known to stop doing business in one country due to a desire to keep doing business in another. Google might decide, for example, to close down all offices in the EU in order to keep their US offices in operation.

If someone has the gall to actually remember and retain an embarrassing episode from my life using their physiological memory, can I petition for them to be fined every day their inconvenient (to me) memories have potential to cause me emotional distress? Can I take matters into my own hands and pummel them in the head until they thoroughly forget me?

Until these memories or these people exist, what's to stop them from (re) blogging whatever I am trying to have swept under the rug, violating my right to be forgotten?